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AHHHHH Snail's!!!

K

kim

Guest
Hi everyone!

On feeding Spunky and Jynx today(well about 10mins ago) I found 3 snails, Very small no bigger than 1mm.

About 3 weeks ago i got some new plants due to spunky killing the other ones! and they seemed fine. But i must admit i didnt wash them... Does anyone know what you do before you put them in the tank?

Are snails good? should i get rid of them hummm how do i even do that??? there maybe more! AHHH

Or does it show i have a good ecosystem in the tank?

If anyone knows let me know! please!! Thanks
 
S

sharon

Guest
Ugh, I hate those snails!!!

Well, I kill them when I find them, just smash them against the tank wall.

I do rinse my plants in heavily salted water, (dunk - sit - rinse), some plants get dunked in mild bleach water then rinsed. This usually kills all the snails and other "stuff".

This time I bought lotus plants which have THICK bunches of roots. OMG! Kind of nasty looking. I don't think I dunked them long enough, because of the white filament swimming thingys I found and the snails.

Now that you have them, you may never get rid of them. I don't think you can use the "snail kill" stuff with your axos, so if you really want them gone, take the axos out, pour in a container of salt (at 48 cents per container, why skimp?) fill the tank w/decorations w/hot water, then rinse. I had tried rinsing my tanks numerous times with just cold water and the snails always came back. The only time I ever killed them in the tank was when I converted the tank to a marine tank!

I don't like to use chemicals so its usually a natural solution for me.

I had a tank with small black gravel and live plants and let me tell you, after two years with no attempt to try and control the snails, the gravel was ruined. So many snails, born and died in that tank, the gravel looked like a combo of colors, white, brown and black!!! I had to dump it out, there was no way to get all those tiny shells out of the gravel. OH well, plant containers can always use some gravel.

So be merciless and kill them all!!!

Sharon
 
J

jennifer

Guest
I take the live and let live philosophy with snails. They keep some of the algae under control and eat any dead plant parts. Other than overpopulation (which you can control by killing some), I never had a problem with them.
 
J

jesse

Guest
my parmestron loves to eat snails. he likes to swim with his nose to the glass,not rubbing, but sniffing them down then he eats them. My mud puppy enjoys the odd snail every now and then, but she only goes for the big ones. So snails can be a mixed blessing, a food stuff in disguise. Also i think that mabey caudates that will eat snails get calcium from the shells.
 
J

jesse

Guest
also if you really whant to get rid of the snails you could move youre axies to another tank and get some snail eating loaches in the tank with the snail infestation. I borrowed some of my friends a very long time ago and they worked like charms!
-Jesse
 
J

joseph

Guest
I've never observed my CFBN eating snails. Hmmm...that would be pretty easy food.

They take over my tanks...but I like them as they do not overpopulate(unlucky ones get killed during water changes) and are interesting. Not to mention they scavenge leftover bits of food.
 
S

stefanie

Guest
to help control the snails, put a large piece of lettuce in the tank. weight it down with a rock or clip. after a few hours, a lot of the snails will be crawling on the lettuce, and you can remove the lettuce, snails attached. of course, not all of the snails are removed, but it keeps them under control. it also works with zucchini, cucumber and most other fruits and veggies, though lettuce seems to work best.
 
P

paris

Guest
there are good snails and bad snails-the ones with the conical shaped shell that seem to all go dormant once a month are the bad types who kill lots of plants -the ones with the disk like shell seem to be mostly harmless to plants and i keep them in there since i never seem overrun so they must be getting eaten somewhere since i always see loads of their eggs every where. the idea of smashing them against the tank is a good one to encourage the newts to eat them. i even take some of the bigger ones out and put them on the rocks near my black bellies -they will eat them too.
 
M

mary

Guest
I say leave them in the tank, kill off a few when there are too many. But they keep the tank clean and eat up most of the uneaten food. they can't really do any harm, if the axolotls don't like them they will eat them - simple! But make sure you don't let them get too over populated! I once went away on holidays for 2 weeks and left my smallish fish tank with a friend. I already had quite a few snails, and heaps of eggs (kind of like jelly sacks with tiney black spots) so I told him that if there were any more snails or eggs appearing to just kill them, squash the snails and take the jelly sacks out of the water so that it doesn't get over run! Well he wanted to see how many he could get in 2 weeks if he just left them alone! When I got back I could't even see my fish from all the snail on the glass, there were so many that in some places they were piled 3 layers deep, they were on the glass, on the ornimants, on the filter, on the gravel I even saw one on my spiney nosed eel that had obviously stayed in the same place for too long!!!! It was only a small tank though, but my point is that they are good in small numbers - for cleaning pourposes - but no in huge quanties!!!
 
K

katy

Guest
mary rose, they actually can do harm to your axies by sucking at their mucous skin coating - or even their eyes. it doesn't happen with every tank, but i've seen enough instances to stay away from them. if you've got algae growing on the glass, your best bet is to get one of those magnet cleaners, and just regularly scrub your ornaments.
 
M

mary

Guest
I don't have them now. I only had them years and years ago in my fish tank. Thanks for the info anyway.
 
P

paris

Guest
i guess im lucky -my round disc like snails have been seen crawling over my animals but never chewing on them. i had a real cool one once - it had long string like algae growing off it -in a current it would wave back and forth-sort of looking like a firey green snail. its too bad it cant clean its own shell eh? ...dunno what ever became of it -has it for over a year and it was the size of a dime ....
 
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